OISE: Canada's Mordor of Education

Sitting like an imposing fortress built in a style known as Brutalist architecture, the spawning ground of the policies and curriculum that form the basis of education in Ontario looms as an evil presence on a quiet stretch of Bloor Street in Toronto's Annex neighborhood. Inside are bitter academics and angry students who are actively trying to undermine the basic values upon which Canadian society was formed.

OISE was the home of Professor Ben Levin, the architect of a highly controversial sex education curriculum which was criticized for introducing highly sexualized content to children at an inappropriately young age. Levin was one of OISE's "stars" up until his arrest for producing child pornography and counselling the sexual abuse of a minor; charges to which he plead guilty in April of this year.

So far, much of the focus related to Levin's position at OISE has concerned his role as an advisor to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. The question is an apt one, as Wynne has pledged to impose the same curriculum that was withdrawn by her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, after it succumbed to widespread denunciation from parents across Ontario.

Wynne, a graduate of OISE, was Education Minister while Levin was Deputy Education Minister. A Deputy Minister is the most senior civil servant in a Ministry, usually appointed directly by the Minister, and is responsible for all the day-to-day operations and ongoing strategic development. To compare respective roles in the private sector, the Deputy Minister would be the CEO, while the Minister would be the Chairman of the Board who holds final authority and sets general direction, but has little involvement in the daily running of the organization.

However, apparently, according to Kathleen Wynne, pointing out any of that makes you "homophobic." That of itself is both ironic and homophobic, since the vast majority of pedophiles, including Levin, are heterosexual males expressing interest in young girls.

So if something is working that well, why do Wynne and the cohorts at OISE have the anxious, histrionic urge to fix it? One of the most telling aspects to the Sex Education controversy in Ontario is that many of the most ardent proponents of the new, contentious curriculum are childless.

To understand their mindset, one needs to understand the culture and the overarching operational philosophy at OISE.

The school itself has programs that ostensibly are supposed to teach how to educate, but their actual stated goals are to create activists to promote very particular agendas in public schools. These agendas are rooted in Marxist theory and based in large measure upon Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the seminal work by the late Brazilian Maoist educator, Paulo Friere.

The instructors at OISE are in large measure made up of Marxists who deplore capitalism and despise the current federal Conservative government. They see most of the world's ills deriving from capitalism and what they refer to as "the patriarchy." To combat these perceived ills, they are determined to produce generations of students as soldiers to do battle against their ideological enemies.

Many, if not most who support Gay Rights and believe in the right to Gay marriage would be scandalized by OISE's twisted dogmas. Gay advocates and their supporters have long accepted the scientific evidence that sexual orientation is a predetermined characteristic. But at OISE, gender is not biologically pre-determined, but a choice.

This is a place where they worship someone like the radical fanatic Judith Butler, a founder of "Queer Theory" who thinks the terror group Hezbollah is a part of the "progressive left." The ranks of groups like the polemical nitwits of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheidare harvested from the crops at OISE.

That is the ideological foundation from which the Ontario Sex Ed and other radical components of the curriculum was derived. They operate with the goal of conditioning children to create a world as OISE wants it, where boys can choose to be girls and vice versa, and where terrorists, should they be from non-western cultures, are automatically oppressed victims. And for OISE, the earlier the age some of the surrounding aspects of sexuality can be instilled in the psyche of children, the better. Since someone has to understand sexual function in order to understand 'the oppression of a heterosexist, gendernormative society.'

If there ever was a place where the lunatics are running the asylum, it is the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and that is in the most literal of terms. PhDs there have been awarded to people with severe, diagnosed mental illnesses, and many whose Doctoral theses have been barely coherent gibberish. Armed with their OISE-provided weaponry, they then become "qualified" to disseminate their lunacy further in the guise of being "accredited experts."

In fairness, not every OISE instructor is a walking self-parody. They do have people like the brilliant Kang Lee, one of the world's leading researchers in child psychology, who is fortunate that the Institute of Child Study with which he is affiliated is separate from the main OISE campus. But far more numerous at OISE are the types like Abigail Bakan, who is the head of OISE's so-called Social Justice Education department.

Another proponent of OISE's brand of "social justice" is Sheryl Nestel, who made a preposterous claim that sounds like it could have come out of the mouth of a neo-Nazi. She alleges that Canadian Jews support Prime Minister Stephen Harper in order to maintain their place in the "racial order."

A Toronto blogger known as Blazing Cat Furoncereceived a visit from police for ironically musing that "OISE...needs to be purged or burnt to the ground, whichever is more effective." The tragedy is that more attention was paid to what Blazing Cat Fur wrote than the depravity at OISE which caused such a comment. The more one knows about OISE, the more it becomes apparent that is a diseased place that infects anyone inside its Brutalist walls.

A fantastic article!
This is what the top of the food chain looks like, in education these days. After 90 years or so, of Marxist infiltration, the most important qualifications are that you ‘not be a capitalist’, ‘not be pro-Israel’ and ‘not be a Christian’. No matter what kind of reprobate you are, as long as you are not one of these, you can be part of their club.
“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” Joseph Stalin.
A quote I am sure would be approved by most educators these days, and one that should rally us out of our stupor.

Richard, great article and expose. In a previous post at the therebel.media, I had raised the importance of identifying who educates and trains the so-called “sexperts” and “curriculum experts” who were consulted and helped shape Wynne’s sex-ed curriculum, a missing critical piece of the puzzle. You point out Levin’s and Wynne’s ties to the OISE. As well, that, “The more one knows about OISE, the more it becomes apparent that is a diseased place that infects anyone inside its Brutalist walls”. Unfortunately, the disease is not contained within those walls but transmitted outside its walls, providing, as you say, “the spawning ground of the policies and curriculum that form the basis of education in Ontario…actively trying to undermine the basic values upon which Canadian society was formed”.
You alluded to Dr. James Kincaid, someone known to be highly sympathetic to pedophiles, being the invited keynote speaker, to a childhood ‘education’ conference in 2013, (“Bodies at Play, Sexuality, Children and Classroom Life”) sponsored by the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies under the auspices of OISE. Part of OISE’s program of studies, in addition to “Women & Gender Studies”, is “Sexual Diversity Studies” which is integrated across a multitude of disciplines, including law, criminology, English, philosophy, political science, religion, sociology, and psychology. Not surprising, therefore, that such thinking finds way into Wynne’s sex-ed curriculum.
According to Wikipedia, Ben Levin was “the academic director for Ontario’s new Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER), funded by the Ministry of Education to improve the sharing of research findings and their use in policy and practice. The government of Ontario suspended him (July 2013) pending the outcome of an investigation”. “How Are Sexual and Gender Identities Represented in an Ontario Science Text?”, is an example of the kind of ‘studies’ carried out under the auspices of Ontario’s KNAER for which Levin served as its academic director until July 2013:http://oere.oise.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Bazzulsykes2011sexualityandscitextsPam_ReviewerRevisions1.pdf
The summary of this ‘research’ indicates that “This study examined McGraw Hill Ryerson’s Biology 12 textbook for evidence of gender and sexuality bias. Analysis of the text revealed that heterosexuality was the only sexual identity represented and references to genders other than male and female were omitted”. Noteworthy that the influence of the OISE philosophy is not limited to the sex-ed curriculum, but that efforts are underway to integrate it into other subjects such as science, with the example of the biology textbook here. An example of how Ontario’s tax dollars are being put to work to support Kathleen Wynne’s social-engineering agenda!

This is a fantastic article. If the statements made about OISE are accurate (I have no reason to believe that they are not), it begs the questions — why is it still operating, why are we not reading about this regularly and how can CBC possibly be excused for not covering this story?

This a great and very well thought out article. You are brutal in your justifiable expose of the rot in OISE. I think this piece could be easily turned into a very powerful book. Your examples of perfidy and craziness at OISE are truly impressive. Good job, man.

You have described it in a nutshell. It is time to kneecap the public school system which is far too infected for our children to attend any more. We have a responsibility as adults to protect our children. Where’s it going to end if we don’t stand up to this and protect them. They are the future. Consider the possibilities.